


and back again

by Signe (oxoniensis)



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-25
Updated: 2007-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/pseuds/Signe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory's excited. More than excited; she's so gleeful Dean doesn't have the word for it. There should be a new word, specially made for her. It could be like German words, a huge breathless combination of excited and happy words - she's happyjoyfulgleefilledrory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and back again

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to [](http://mcee.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://mcee.livejournal.com/)**mcee** , who's saved me from the most embarrassing errors ever!
> 
> Spoilers for 2x12 and 6x02. 
> 
> Story title from 'The Road to Babylon' by Margaret Adelaide Wilson, third section title from 'The Beach Road by the Wood' by Geoffrey Howard.

1\. _these shoes are made for driving_

Rory's excited. More than excited; she's so gleeful Dean doesn't have the word for it. There should be a new word, specially made for her. It could be like German words, a huge breathless combination of excited and happy words – she's happyjoyfulgleefilledrory.

Dean loves watching her when she's like this, and he loves listening to her. She starts and stops sentences at random, bouncing up and down on her toes, and he wants to lift her up and twirl her around and around in the air until she's giddy and begging him to stop.

Lorelai's watching though, so he restrains himself. Not that he thinks she'd really mind that much.

"Do I have the right shoes on?" Rory asks. "I haven't, have I?" she says, and dashes back in the house without waiting for an answer.

Dean is baffled.

"The right shoes?" he asks, and looks at Lorelai for guidance.

"A girl's gotta have the right shoes for her first proper new car trial run," she explains. "Smart, but comfy, heel low enough to be good on the pedal, a sole with a firm grip so you don't slide off—"

"Okay." Dean raises his hands to stop her. "I get the point. The right shoes. Important."

Rory comes back out eventually, in her school shoes.

"Let's check the soles," Dean says. Rory lifts one foot and he bends over it. "Hmmm."

"I feel like a horse," Rory says. "They're good?"

"Perfect choice, Miss Gilmore," he says, and motions her towards the car.

She heads over to the right hand side, and Dean coughs.

"Oh, of course, I'm driving!" she exclaims, and runs around to the other side. "This is so cool," she adds as she opens the driver's door, and a thrill runs through Dean. He's made her happy; all he ever wants is to make her happy.

The car starts straight away – Dean was ridiculously nervous that it wouldn't – and they drive around the square twice.

"I want to show the car off," Rory says when he raises his eyebrows in query.

Dean puts his elbow up on the side and watches her drive. She's focused, every movement precise and neat. Her cardigan is the exact shade of blue of the car, and he thinks it looks pretty on her.

Once they're out of Stars Hollow, Rory looks over at the glove compartment.

"Need something?" Dean asks.

She nods. "The map. I put a map in there." Her face drops. "I _think_ I remembered to put a map in there."

Dean smiles secretly at her look of panic. The map is there, and he pulls it out. "What do we want this for?" he asks.

Rory looks at him. "It's a map, Dean. For directions."

"But we're not going anywhere."

"So? Even if we're not going anywhere, we still need to know _where_ we are. It's important."

"We can't just drive and see where we end up? Wing it, go wild and crazy, be adventurers?"

Rory ponders the questions, hands neatly at ten and two on the steering wheel. "I'm not really the wild and crazy type," she says. "Unless you count staying up until two o'clock in the morning reading _The Misanthrope_ wild and crazy."

"I do. That is definitely wild and crazy, and if you did it with a torch under the sheets, it's even rebellious too."

"I didn't." She pauses. "But I did stay up late when I was eight to finish my homework once. I was supposed to be in bed, and I'd told mom I'd done all my homework because I wanted to watch _National Velvet_ with her, so I had to write my poem for English class under the bed covers."

"Shocking. A rebel at eight. I would never have expected it of you. Does Lorelai know?"

"I confessed the next day."

"And?"

"Mom laughed."

"Way to spoil the rebel feeling."

"Yeah. You can't really be a rebel when your mom is laughing at you. It's against the rebel code."

"But you can be a road rebel now. You can drive wherever you want. The road is your oyster. Or something."

Rory laughs. "Okay. We'll do it." She straightens her shoulders and looks determined. "You can throw the map away."

Dean winds down the window, then looks across at her. "How about I put it back in the glove compartment?" he suggests.

"Oh, yes," she sighs in relief. "I don't think I'm ready to be _that_ crazy yet."

Dean puts the map away. "It's there, just in case. But we don't have to look at it."

They choose directions at intersections by a different method each time. The first intersection Rory turns left because right is the right way to go, so we'll go the other way \- she smiles brightly as she gives her reason. At a T junction she goes right because there's a rabbit by the side of the road and Rory insists it's beckoning them that way. When they come to a crossroads, Rory sits there and does _eeny, meeny, miny, moe_ , and Dean throws his head back and laughs as she points at each route in turn.

"You are crazy, you know that?" Dean says.

"Thank you," Rory answers, as though he's given her the best compliment in the world. Which he has, really, because he loves that she's crazy and giddy and silly, as much as he loves her when she's engrossed in study and too focused to even notice there's a world of things going on around her.

Long straight stretch of road, and Rory pulls over.

"Something wrong?" Dean asks, puzzled. The car sounds good to him, he's checked and double-checked it, and so has Gypsy – there shouldn't be any problems.

"No, nothing's wrong," Rory says. "I love it."

"Then why—"

"And I love you," she adds, and she's looking at him with such intensity, bottom lip bitten between her teeth, and he loves her so much he can barely get the words out himself. It stings his throat a little when he says it back, the words are so important, mean so much to him.

He leans over, and she's smiling up at him, sweet and hopeful, and she feels so delicate when he takes her face in his hands, his thumb brushing the smooth curve of her jaw. He kisses the corner of her mouth, tastes coffee. She always tastes of coffee – he couldn't drink it when they were broken up, it reminded him too much of her – and sugar too, sweet from the donut she ate for breakfast.

He could kiss her forever and it wouldn't be long enough.

*

2\. _the road to nowhere_

He sees her by the side of the road. He swerves a fraction, startled, but the road's busy so he gets a grip on himself and drives straight on past. She doesn't see him, doesn't lift her head up from skewering garbage and collecting it in the orange plastic bag she's carrying that's almost as big as her. She looks overwhelmed, off to one side from the others, and when she's a small figure in his rearview mirror he thinks he sees her jostled by one of the other girls.

He'd heard, of course. It's Stars Hollow – he can't avoid hearing every detail of Rory's life. But it hasn't hit him until he sees her in that hideous blue vest, looking so lost.

He'd thought he was holding her back. That's why he left, got in his truck and drove away without looking back once. It wasn't because he loved her any less – he doesn't think he'll ever stop loving her, though heaven knows he tried, all the while he was with Lindsay and ever since he and Rory broke up again. He just realized he couldn't give her what she wanted, be who she needed him to be, be the kind of man she deserved.

And now she's going out with some rich college guy – the one he saw her with at that party – and she should be on top of the world. She should be soaring, giddy with rarefied air, high up above him. But she crashed. Crashed and burned, with no one to put the fire out. It hurts him, real physical pain in the center of his chest, so bad that he pulls over as soon as he's driven out of sight and sits slumped over the steering wheel, trying to breathe.

The world's turned upside down. He's at college now, full-time, trying to make something of himself, and he's doing okay. Doing more than okay, really. And Rory's a dropout with a police record. Rory's left Yale, left her dreams behind. He can't get his head around it, it's too wrong to grasp.

And he can't even shake sense into her. He can't hold her tight, hug her and tell her he loves her and everything will be alright. He can't even shout at her if that's what she needs, because he doesn't have the right any more.

He wants to turn his truck around and do something, wants it so bad, but he just sits there. Before he realizes it, the pain in his chest has turned to tears, and he's sobbing for the first time since he was a kid. Only now there's no one to hold him and make it better.

*

3\. _a road where I would go_

"Can't you go any faster?" Rory shrieks at him. "Dean, I need you to go faster. Can't you make like the Tardis and travel through time and space instantly?"

"I love you, Rory, but I'm not going to go any faster with you digging your nails into my arm. In fact, if you'd just let go," – Dean gently tries to pry her fingers loose – "I'd be able to drive much more easily."

"I should have married a Time Lord. We'd be there by now, and it'd all be over, or even if it weren't over at least it wouldn't be so bad. It won't be so bad when we get there, will it?"

"No, it won't be so bad when we get there," Dean promises, and hopes he's right.

He concentrates on the road, trying to work out the fastest route through the rush-hour traffic. He had it all planned, routes from everywhere Rory might be, but she'd felt good this morning, so they'd gone to Hartford to look at fancy English prams, and he hadn't factored in a visit to Hartford.

Rory groans again, half scream half sob. "This wouldn't be happening if it weren't for you," Rory says as soon as she can talk again.

"I should hope not." Dean spares her an amused glance and puts his hand on her thigh, squeezes gently. "It's going to be okay," he says.

"I am never doing this again. Ever." The last word is exhaled on a grunt, and Dean puts his foot down and swerves around a lumbering van, twisting back into lane just in time. He can't bear seeing her in pain, and even though he knew it was going to be like this – he went to all the classes with her, though he closed his eyes for some of the more graphic videos, and so did Rory – _knowing_ it just isn't the same as going through it.

Her contractions are getting closer (he thinks, though he can't time accurately and drive) and he wishes there was something more he could do. Feels helpless, even though he's doing his assigned task.

"Stop the car," she shrieks, and Dean pulls to the side of the road. It's familiar, and he realizes it's the same stretch of road they made out on when they test drove Rory's first car, the one he built her, and it's the same place he pulled over and wept for her when he thought he'd lost her for good.

It isn't going to be the place their child is born though.

"I can't do this, Dean. I'm scared. I can't have a baby. I can't be a mother. I've changed my mind, I need to send it back."

"Rory," he says, taking her hand gently. "Honey, you can do this. You can breathe and you can make it to the hospital, and there will be lots of painkillers there. All the pain relief you need. You just need to breathe slowly and I'll start driving again, and we'll get there. Okay?" He wants to have a panic attack himself. He's going to be a father, and it's just hitting him now. It's scaring him half to death, but he has to be calm for Rory. So he is.

"I don't really wish I'd married a Time Lord," she says, sheepish. "Or anyone else. It's just—"

"I know," he says, and kisses her gently on the top of her head. "Ready?"

She bites her lip, then takes a deep breath and nods firmly. "Drive on," she says with an imperious wave, and he pulls out.


End file.
